Scientists really don't understand time... but they do have some theories about what it might (and might not) be.

Time crystals exhibit perpetual motion-like behavior when separated from external energy input, but scientists found a way to ...

A glittering hunk of crystal gets its iridescence from a highly regular atomic structure. Frank Wilczek, the 2012 Nobel ...

Nature has many rhythms: the seasons result from Earth's movement around the sun, the ticking of a pendulum clock results from the oscillation of its pendulum. These phenomena can be understood with ...

For most of us, time feels like one of life’s biggest certainties. We wake up, go about our day, watch the clock move forward, and assume time is ticking away in a steady, reliable flow from past to ...

The world’s best clocks may be sensitive to an odd mix of quantum and relativistic effects that would stretch time and test ...

Scientists have created the first real-time 3D simulations of how lasers alter the quantum vacuum. Using cutting-edge computational modeling, scientists from the University of Oxford, in collaboration ...

Scientists have, for the first time, experimentally proven that angular momentum is conserved even when a single photon splits into two, pushing quantum physics to its most fundamental limits. Using ...

For the first time, physicists have simulated what objects moving near the speed of light would look like — an optical ...

We’re celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. This year is the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, according to ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...